/Communication/Updates.txt

Updates since 0.9.8 Beta:



1) Improved song licensing facilities.



Updates since 0.9.7 Beta:



1) Fixed a crash caused by searching for bible verses with non-numeric characters (ie: "Jn1:9-12). Only chapters will appear in search results.



2) Made some small changes to ensure better visual compatibility with Windows XP.



3) Added some icons to the program.



4) Improved the ways that the PowerSong software communicates its current actions to the user. This involved adding some visual consistency to the information given at various points, and showing progress upfront rather than simply hanging until completion.



5) Fixed a bug where attempting to edit a song while a notice was active would cause an error.



6) Added the ability to edit title (or "adhoc") items, which was clearly a glaring omission until now!



7) Fixed a bug in the CountDown plugin. It will no longer crash when non-numeric data is entered into the dialog box that requests the duration of the count down.



8) It is now possible to specify copyright and license information in a database via the PowerSong Configuration dialog box.



9) Enhanced projectlet abilities. For now, the only purpose of these enhancements is to allow for the use of larger CCLI-compliant copyright notices, configurable from the "Edit Style" dialog box. Databases will be automatically upgraded to the new database version (0.9.8).



10) PowerSong is now a single-instance application. You can no longer have two or more instances running at the same time.



11) PowerSong can now be closed if an error occurs while closing the application.



12) It is now possible to create links to a database, so that it can be opened immediately without having to navigate the PowerSong "open database" dialog box.



13) Play lists can now be opened directly via the operating system as well as via the main PowerSong window.



14) Export Files (*.PowerSong) can now be opened directly via the operating system as well as via the main PowerSong window.



15) Specific features can now be enabled and disabled at will.



16) Enabled ability to log events. This functionality is integrated with a new reporting mechanism that reports on song usage.



17) The Bible in Basic English can now be downloaded by the software directly.



18) Upgraded the source code to Visual Basic 2010, and the related solution to open in Visual Studio 2010.



19) Partially commented the Song Database API.



Updates since 0.9.6 Beta:



1) Fixed ability to add and remove bibles, as well as setting a default translation.



2) Can now download additional content from the PowerSong website, including styles and the BBE bible translation.



3) Items referenced in saved play lists now know which style was assigned to them, as well as any overriding background image or colour.



4) Compatibility has been maintained with old style play lists. To realise this, two options are available when loading or saving them. Old style play lists (*.pspl) only reference the songs in the currently loaded database, without referencing assigned styles.



5) Adhoc items are now included in saved play lists.



6) The "Load Play List" and "Save Play List" pop up menu items weren't wired up to the relevant functionality. They are now.



7) Loaded play list items can now be appended to the end of the list, rather than always replacing the items in it.



8) Play lists can now be cleared via a single menu item.



9) Stopped plugins can now remove any menu item entries that they had previously added.



10) Anchored the copyright button on the song form so that it moves when the window is resized.



11) Started work documenting the software. An initial version is included in the package.



12) Fixed a bug where minimizing the projection window would crash the program because it would attempt to make an infinitely small font. This is the first bug fixed thanks to the new error reporting system!



13) Fixed a bug where the target of the live projection was not switched to the desired screen via the menu items.



14) As requested, added a short cut key to allow the main projection to be instantly turned off and on. The short cut key is F4.



15) The test projection plug in now fades out nicely when requested to stop. This means that if there is text visible on the screen underneath it, there will be a nice transition between the scrolling colours and the text.



16) Enabled transparency effects for style fonts and related font effects, accessible by right clicking the relevant colour on the style dialog box.



Updates since 0.9.5 Beta:



There's quite a large number of significant updates in this release, deserving of far more than a 0.0.1 increase in version number. Total list of changes is as follows.



1) Enhanced usability of the projection region.



2) Search box is now cleared when selecting something else to search for. Additionally, song categories are no longer visible when searching the bible.



3) Can now add and remove bible translations, and select which ones to use.



4) The gaps at the top of each bible chapter subsequent to the first have been removed.



5) Can no longer create multiple categories with the same name, or rename an existing category to one that has the same name.



6) Improved indexing so that the index is quickly and intelligently updated when adding, removing or editing songs.



7) Re-architected song management code so that there are item types rather than instances of songs (ie, a bible chapter was a song internally). This fixed a few bugs.



8) The copyright line text box is now multiline.



9) The "Initial Content" is now searched for properly, instead of relying on the working folder of the shortcut to PowerSong.



10) Added song preview ability, which is configurable.



11) Improved exporting and importing to allow styles to be exported and imported. Existing items can also be overwritten. More options are available for downloading additional content.



12) Added a FPS plugin to the collection of plugins available.



13) Added a better outline effect, and implemented the "box verse" and "filled verse" effects.



14) Removed the need for plugin archive files to contain the Plugin.txt file. Plugin assemblies within an archive file are now determined automatically. Can also now load plugins simply by selecting a DLL.



15) Many enhancements have been made to styles. Better positioning, bug fixes...etc. You can now display the copyright line and title if desired, and position all elements manually. Additionally, can now configure settings for scrolling notices per style.



16) Added new shortcut keys.



17) Implemented various techniques that drastically increase the number of frames per second of each projector.



18) Scrolling notices functionality has been improved, with everything being configurable. The notices also slide in and out.



19) Wrote some unit tests for indexing in order to increase the reliability of smart indexing.



Updates since 0.9.4 Alpha:



1) Enhanced some of the visual elements on various forms.



2) It is now possible to fully examine items on the "import" screen by clicking them.



3) Introduced "categories". It is now possible to assign songs to one or more categories, and dynamically show or hide all songs in a particular category.



4) Clarified the purpose of the "Export Database" and "Import Database" functions, making it more clear that it creates an archive or imports songs from an archive.



5) The initial file name of a potential export database is now automatically determined in the "Export Database" function based on the name of the currently loaded database.



6) Fixed bugs: One a bug where a file handle was not being released on file import, another one where the incorrect size was being passed to the font dialog box when editing a style's font.



7) Increased the usability of the "Set Background" dialog box.



8) Currently selected overriden background is now shown when editing item background.



9) Small text changes throughout the interface.



10) Setting the size of a font now has an effect, rather than the setting being totally ignored (oops!).



11) Updated the "Configure Style" dialog box to enhance usability.



12) Added better error handling in various scenarios.



13) Decreased the amount of time the application spends opening a database.



14) Vastly improved access to the bible via the search box and the presented results.



15) Scrolling notice facility now slowly appears and dissapears.



Updates since 0.9.3 Alpha:



1) Made the introduction screen look a lot better as third party sites were using an image of it as their primary screenshot.



2) Users can now select the screen to project the main display to.



3) Moved playlist management buttons to its own menu, rather than having buttons on the main form, for usability reasons.



4) Made some other, small, usability enhancements by rearranging the user interface a little.



5) Gave the program an icon.



Updates since 0.9.2 Alpha:



1) Made a new plugin to test the projection.



2) Improved handling of plugins in the event of one throwing an exception. There is still a lot to do, however.



3) Added simple database file version check. It is still possible to load existing databases, but it may be worthwhile exporting them and importing them into new ones to stop message boxes popping up in the future.



4) Added song download capability to download songs directly from the PowerSong website.



5) Merged the plugins solution with the main solution.



6) Added a feedback portal.



7) Styles can now contain margins.



8) Projectors now speed up considerably if they have a significant backlog of actions to perform, by reducing the maximum duration of each action to one frame of animation.



9) Fixed bug associated with displaying nothing with an outline style.



10) Expanded the plugin API a little.



11) Information about the size of the projecting area is now given to plugins.



12) Improved the CountDown plugin.



Updates since 0.9.1 Alpha:



1) It is now possible to move items in the playlist up and down.



2) The song index is now recreated or added to whenever an import is performed or a song added to the database. If a song is edited or removed, the index is not updated. This will be fixed in a future version.



3) Fixed bug where double clicking an empty playlist would crash the program.



4) Changed text "Configure Playlist Item" to "Change Style" in the playlist menu to more clearly indicate its purpose.



5) Fixed bug where pressing the return key with no song selected would crash the program.



6) Started work on a build project. As a consequence, I removed the developer tools, merging its functionality into the build project.



Updates since 0.9.0 Alpha:



1) Added import functionality to import data from Presenter Version 3.1 Build 171.



2) Fixed bug where activating a song with no verses would crash the program.



Updates Since 0.8.2 Alpha:



1) Added some error handling and interface improvements to the create plugin dialog box.



2) Playlists can now be saved and loaded, but the style information is never saved. This will probably change in a future release.



3) Made some interface improvements to the manage plugins dialog box.



4) Changed the structure of the style files so that background types can be defined rather than simply toggling between background images and colours.



5) Changed the background adjustment facility on playlists to allow users to change the background using a more complete variety of background types, rather than only allowing an image to be used.



6) Combined all database xml files into a single xml file, which makes far more sense than having multiple xml files with one table each. This change renders all existing databases corrupt - so be sure to export/import between the versions if you wish to preserve songs!



7) Finished the ground work to allow database settings to be added, removed, changed and retrieved from a database.



8) Whilst still very, very buggy, further work has gone into allowing bible verses to be displayed. The mechanism is to allow searches for bible chapters, from which verses can be individually selected whenever the chapter is active, much like a song.



9) As always, a large number of bugs were fixed.



10) A new type of item can be added to the playlist, called the "Title Item Type". It is designed to allow the adding of items that aren't loaded from or saved to the database.



11) Replaced the basic notice facility with a scrolling notice facility. Text scrolls at the top of the screen in a specified colour and for a specified period of time.